Silicon Valleywood

Social Everything? September 4, 2008

Met with a handful of clients and prospects yesterday in Seattle. During one pretty free-form conversation with Classmates — one of the few companies that has pulled off paid consumer content online — the discussion ran along the lines of, if the Internet was a connection layer, and HTML etc. was a content/presentation layer, and now we’re adding a social layer, are there any applications that wouldn’t benefit from social functionality? At least from a user’s perspective.

Think about that for a second. It’s tough to come up with any. You end up mumbling about exclusive access/membership or information that needs to be “pure” — from a single, identified source (or artist). And even that could benefit from commentary. One-to-one private communications may be the only thing…